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Sgt Roman F. Klick 36620923
HS 1393 Engr APO 709
c/o PM SF Cal
7 December 1944

Dear Aunty Clara,

Thursday

What a day. No kidding, Aunty Clara, I've been on the go pretty steady lately. We put in a good eight hour day at the office and then work around the company or the barracks on one thing or another. But as a reward for all the hard work, etcetera, your two V-mails of the 29th and the 30th arrived in the morning's mail. I rather like to see the V-mails coming in the morning delivery rather than the afternoon run. I guess three o'clock is too late in the day to wait for it.

By the way, wasn't it a few years back that Myrtle had the tickets for the Western Electric party at Morton and you went with Mrs Reed and now this time it was you who was doing the inviting even if the invited couldn't come? I saw one of those Western Electric shows quite by accident one time and enjoyed it immensely. They must have a good committee for getting up those affairs.

Do you mean to say that Mary is already moving around in different houses inside Waukesha? Anita turned out to be the only stable one in that Lopez clan by living on Center Street for such a long spell and now buying a house. Aunt-Aunt and Mary have done more moving about between the two of them than we will probably do the rest of our lives. Tell me, just what is the set-up over there in Milwaukee. Just who lives with who? Do all of them live in Anita's house i.e., Aunt-Aunt and Uncle King and is that the Nash street address?

Since all the ping-pong paddles are the sandpaper variety there isn't much use in sending any to me because not only have I got four of these kind in one of the closets (I think it is my bedroom closet) but those are also the kind the Army Special Services provide. And another thing - at long last the ping-pong playing went kerflop. Too many handicaps beset us players to continue the competition and now with Jack and I having dissolved our partnership so that eliminates our famous doubles teams. However, just as it has in the past, so it will once again, revive in popularity sooner or later although I hardly believe that ping-pong will ever have such a sustained run of popularity as it did during these last several months.

So it's snowing back home, eh? Well, what do you know about that! Chilly isn't it? O well, cheer up Aunty Clara, there are only from three to four months of winter left before the days become warmer again. I've finally found out the difference between winter and summer on this island. In the winter time (that season which has passed this summer) the wind blew the rain into the front of the office and likewise into the front of the barracks on my bed. Now in the summer (which is getting ready to begin in a few weeks) the wind is blowing the rain into the building from the other end which is okay because I work and live at what is now the dry end of the buildings. That is the one thing which is wrong with these tropical huts we live in. They are merely semi-shelters for the screen windows completely encircle the sides so that we really have an opening around the entire building. The windows are fastened tight so that when it rains it just rains right in thru the screening.

If they haven't any fountain pen points, I guess we will just have to call it a good idea anyway and then forget about it. Thanks, though, for looking for them.

We are going to have those two pictures "Mrs Skeffington" and "Take It or Leave It" here in our theater area within a week or two and I'm sure I'll enjoy the Bette Davis picture since I liked her in that last picture "Old Acquaintance."

The working day was booked solid once again and there wasn't much of a break anytime between seven o'clock and four o'clock. The morning reports were the only big job I did and besides that I knocked out all the OPVs and sent them into the Finance Officer. After that, the rest of the day was spent in typing the military correspondence lessons and doing small jobs for Sacket as he gave them to me -- letters, indorsements and addresses on envelopes. I did all but three of the military letters and came back this evening to finish them up and hand all of them in to Lt Suiter. Saki stayed up to past twelve last night working on them and he must have been sleepier than I was for when he looked at them this morning they were terrible but at least he had accomplished the job of getting them on the 7th. The rest of us all turned them in this evening - still on the 7th. The only three fellows that haven't turned their lessons in are Grauel, Lynd and Ebner. Eb can't type, Lynd is busy with his mail and Grauel can't get hold of a typewriter very often during these busy days. I think Lt Suiter will let them forget about their lessons for their jobs in no way call for typing. On the whole the course was not very popular since the rules and regulations on military correspondence have changed so fast that the book which was printed last year was already outdated and we ignored quite a bit of what it said and did the letters the way we always do them.

But now we are going to have another one and it should prove to be somewhat more interesting since it concerns Military orders and how to type them up etcetera. This should be valuable for there seems to be no standardization of how orders should be typed up anyplace in the Army. Every headquarters has their own special form to use. I hardly think that this course will change the style of our orders but it may affect the wording of them and also the type of information which goes on certain orders.

After four o'clock today I had to hop down to the barracks and get busy on my rifle since they were going to inspect all the guns which had fired yesterday. Gosh, I thought the thing was clean from all the work I did on it last night and here it was dirty as never before. When Cooley inspected it, he said it was still dirty so then I spent the rest of the evening until nine o'clock at night cleaning that bore with hot water, soap, rifle bore cleaner fluid, oil and patches. The bore is not very good so it makes it a very tedious job getting it to look clean. So much for rifles.

The results of that test we fellows took the other day came in today in a rather quick answer. I didn't think the results would be made known to us but there they were. One fellow who had answered all the questions had the lowest mark and two other fellows also failed to get what was supposed to be the minimum mark. The other four made more than the minimum mark and, fortunately, one of them was myself. Why I say fortunately is that here I was thinking the army life was tearing me down and not letting me think straight and fogging up my mind and now according to the results of this test, I've slipped only two points from that which I made two years ago in Camp Grant. Just as always --- a person feels that he did a very poor showing and it turns out good anyway. In fact, it was the best score from our group and that started all the fellows in the office kidding me. Lewis would come up next to my desk and talk to someone saying "Say, fellow, you know that Klick guy? Well, he's a smart egg, I hear" and so it went all day long and I had to laugh to myself at them. They were embarrassing me something terrible and soon passed the word along to the other offices and everyone who saw me today would make some remark about it. Funny thing, how that came along so quick --- received a notice one day, go down the next and get the results on the third day. Made life interesting by a deviation from the routine.

Here is something I've wanted to mention but kept forgetting. This Jose Iturbi is a great pianist yet in every picture he will give out with a little boogie beat while some USO pianists will answer the calls for boogie by saying that they only play classics. Who is the better man?

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman